How to write a great research paper

Simon Peyton JonesMicrosoft Research, Cambridge

Writing papers is a skill

Many papers are badly written Good writing is a skill you can learn It’s a skill that is worth learning:

You will get more brownie points (more papers accepted etc)

Your ideas will have more impact You will have better ideas

Incr

easi

ng

imp

ort

ance

Why writepapers?

Good papers and talks are a fundamental

part of research

excellence

To impress others, gain recognition,

and get promoted

No

Why write papers?

To describe what you

have done

No

Your reader does not care about you

Why write papers?

To describe the WizWoz

system

Your reader does not have a WizWoz No

Why write papers?

But in design, in contrast with science, novelty in itself has no

merit.

If we recognize our artifacts as tools, we test them by their

usefulness and their costs, not their novelty.

Fred Brooks “The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith”, Comm

ACM 39(5), March 1996

To describe somethin

g new

No

Why write papers?

To convey a useful and re-usable ideaIf we perceive our role aright, we then see more clearly

the proper criterion for success: a toolmaker succeeds as, and only as, the users of his tool succeed with his aid. However shining the blade, however jewelled the

hilt, however perfect the heft, a sword is tested only by cutting. That swordsmith is successful whose clients die

of old age.

Fred Brooks “The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith”

Yes

Papers communicate ideas

Your goal: to infect the mind of your reader with your idea, like a virus

Papers are far more durable than programs (think Mozart)

The greatest ideas are (literally) worthless if you keep them to

yourself

Writing papers: model 1

Idea Do research Write paper

Writing papers: model 2

Idea Do research Write paper

Idea Write paper Do research

Forces us to be clear, focused Crystallises what we don’t

understand Opens the way to dialogue with

others: reality check, critique, and collaboration

Do not be intimidated

Write a paper, and give a talk, about

any idea, no matter how weedy and

insignificant it may seem to you

Fallacy You need to have a fantastic idea before you can write a paper. (Everyone else seems to.)

Do not be intimidated

Write a paper, and give a talk, about any idea, no matter how insignificant

it may seem to you

Writing the paper is how you develop the idea in the first place

It usually turns out to be more interesting and challenging that it seemed at first

The Idea

Your paper should have just one “ping”: one clear, sharp idea

You may not know exactly what the ping is when you start writing; but you must know when you finish

If you have lots of ideas, write lots of papers

Idea A re-usable insight, useful to the reader

Can you hear the “ping”?

Many papers contain good ideas, but do not distil what they are.

Make certain that the reader is in no doubt what the idea is. Be 100% explicit: “The main idea of this paper is....” “In this section we present the main

contributions of the paper.”

Thanks to Joe Touch for “one ping”

Your narrative flow

Here is a problem It’s an interesting problem It’s an unsolved problem Here is my idea My idea works (details, data) Here’s how my idea compares to

other people’s approaches

I wish I knew

how to solve that!

I see how that

works. Ingenious

!

Structure (conference paper)

Title (1000 readers) Abstract (4 sentences, 100 readers) Introduction (1 page, 100 readers) The problem (1 page, 10 readers) My idea (2 pages, 10 readers) The details (5 pages, 3 readers) Related work (1-2 pages, 10 readers) Conclusions and further work (0.5

pages)

The abstract

I usually write the abstract last Used by program committee

members to decide which papers to read

Four sentences [Kent Beck]1. State the problem2. Say why it’s an interesting problem3. Say what your solution achieves4. Say what follows from your solution

Example

1. Many papers are badly written and hard to understand

2. This is a pity, because their good ideas may go unappreciated

3. Following simple guidelines can dramatically improve the quality of your papers

4. Your work will be used more, and the feedback you get from others will in turn improve your research

Structure

Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page) The problem (1 page) My idea (2 pages) The details (5 pages) Related work (1-2 pages) Conclusions and further work (0.5

pages)

The introduction (1 page)

1. Describe the problem2. State your contributions...and that is all

ONE PAGE!

Describe the problem

Use an example

to introduce

the problem

Molehills not mountains

“Computer programs often have bugs. It is very important to eliminate these bugs [1,2]. Many researchers have tried [3,4,5,6]. It really is very important.”

“Consider this program, which has an interesting bug. <brief description>. We will show an automatic technique for identifying and removing such bugs”

Yawn

Cool!

State your contributions

Write the list of contributions first The list of contributions drives the

entire paper: the paper substantiates the claims you have made

Reader thinks “gosh, if they can really deliver this, that’s be exciting; I’d better read on”

State your contributions

Bulleted list of

contributions

Do not leave the reader to guess what

your contributions are!

Contributions should be refutable

NO! YES!We describe the WizWoz system. It is really cool.

We give the syntax and semantics of a language that supports concurrent processes (Section 3). Its innovative features are...

We study its properties We prove that the type system is sound, and that type checking is decidable (Section 4)

We have used WizWoz in practice

We have built a GUI toolkit in WizWoz, and used it to implement a text editor (Section 5). The result is half the length of the Java version.

No “rest of this paper is...”

Not:

Instead, use forward references from the narrative in the introduction. The introduction (including the contributions) should survey the whole paper, and therefore forward reference every important part.

“The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the problem. Section 3 ... Finally, Section 8 concludes”.

Structure

Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page)

Related work The problem (1 page) My idea (2 pages) The details (5 pages) Related work (1-2 pages) Conclusions and further work (0.5

pages)

No related work yet!

Related work

Your reader Your idea

We adopt the notion of transaction from Brown [1], as modified for distributed systems by White [2], using the four-phase interpolation algorithm of Green [3]. Our work differs from White in our advanced revocation protocol, which deals with the case of priority inversion as described by Yellow [4].

No related work yet

Problem 1: the reader knows nothing about the problem yet; so your (carefully trimmed) description of various technical tradeoffs is absolutely incomprehensible

Problem 2: describing alternative approaches gets between the reader and your idea

I feel tired

I feel stupid

Structure

Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page) The problem (1 page) My idea (2 pages) The details (5 pages) Related work (1-2 pages) Conclusions and further work (0.5

pages)

Presenting the idea

3. The idea

Consider a bifircuated semi-lattice D, over a hyper-modulated signature S. Suppose pi

is an element of D. Then we know for every such pi there is an epi-modulus j, such that pj < pi. Sounds impressive...but Sends readers to sleep In a paper you MUST provide the details,

but FIRST convey the idea

Presenting the idea

Explain it as if you were speaking to someone using a whiteboard

Conveying the intuition is primary, not secondary

Once your reader has the intuition, she can follow the details (but not vice versa)

Even if she skips the details, she still takes away something valuable

Putting the reader first

Do not recapitulate your personal journey of discovery. This route may be soaked with your blood, but that is not interesting to the reader.

Instead, choose the most direct route to the idea.

The payload of your paper

Introduce the problem, and your idea, using

EXAMPLESand only then present the

general case

Using examples

Example right away

The Simon PJ question: is there any

typewriter font?

The details: evidence

Your introduction makes claims The body of the paper provides

evidence to support each claim Check each claim in the introduction,

identify the evidence, and forward-reference it from the claim

Evidence can be: analysis and comparison, theorems, measurements, case studies

Structure

Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page) The problem (1 page) My idea (2 pages) The details (5 pages) Related work (1-2 pages) Conclusions and further work (0.5

pages)

Related work

Fallacy To make my work look good, I have to make other people’s work look bad

The truth: credit is not like money

Giving credit to others does not diminish the credit you

get from your paper

Warmly acknowledge people who have helped you

Be generous to the competition. “In his inspiring paper [Foo98] Foogle shows.... We develop his foundation in the following ways...”

Acknowledge weaknesses in your approach

Credit is not like money

Failing to give credit to others can kill your paper

If you imply that an idea is yours, and the referee knows it is not, then either

You don’t know that it’s an old idea (bad) You do know, but are pretending it’s

yours (very bad)

Structure

Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page) The problem (1 page) My idea (2 pages) The details (5 pages) Related work (1-2 pages) Conclusions and further work (0.5

pages)

Conclusions and further work

Be brief. For future work, say what you intend

to do. Don’t waste space on ambitious but unattractive developments.

The process of writing

The process

Start early. Very early. Hastily-written papers get rejected. Papers are like wine: they need time to

mature

Collaborate Use CVS to support collaboration

Getting help

Experts are good Non-experts are also very good Each reader can only read your paper for

the first time once! So use them carefully Explain carefully what you want (“I got lost

here” is much more important than “Jarva is mis-spelt”.)

Get your paper read by as many friendly guinea pigs as

possible

Getting expert help

A good plan: when you think you are done, send the draft to the competition saying “could you help me ensure that I describe your work fairly?”.

Often they will respond with helpful critique (they are interested in the area)

They are likely to be your referees anyway, so getting their comments or criticism up front is Jolly Good.

Listening to your reviewers

Treat every review like gold dust

Be (truly) grateful for criticism as well as praise

This is really, really, really hard

But it’s really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really

important

Listening to your reviewers

Read every criticism as a positive suggestion for something you could explain more clearly

DO NOT respond “you stupid person, I meant X”. Fix the paper so that X is apparent even to the stupidest reader.

Thank them warmly. They have given up their time for you.

Language and style

Basic stuff

Submit by the deadline Keep to the length restrictions

Do not narrow the margins Do not use 6pt font

On occasion, supply supporting evidence (e.g. experimental data, or a written-out proof) in an appendix

Always use a spell checker

Visual structure

Give strong visual structure to your paper using sections and sub-sections bullets italics laid-out code

Find out how to draw pictures, and use them

Visual structure

Use the active voice

NO YESIt can be seen that... We can see that...

34 tests were run We ran 34 tests

These properties were thought desirable

We wanted to retain these properties

It might be thought that this would be a type error

You might think this would be a type error

The passive voice is “respectable” but it DEADENS your paper. Avoid it at all costs.

“We” = you and

the reader

“We” = the

authors

“You” = the

reader

Use simple, direct language

NO YESThe object under study was

displaced horizontallyThe ball moved sideways

On an annual basis Yearly

Endeavour to ascertain Find out

It could be considered that the speed of storage reclamation left something to be desired

The garbage collector was really slow

Summary

If you remember nothing else: Identify your key idea Make your contributions

explicit Use examples

A good starting point:“Advice on Research and Writing”http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/

mleone/web/how-to.html